1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to technology for printing a sample print.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there are increasing tendencies to value the quality of finished products. In particular, in bulk printing, it is required to check whether a desired finishing can be obtained with the current print settings, and changes of the quality of printed matter with time are also required to be observed. In general, the final finishing of printed matter depends on a printer adjustment state and the type of the paper used. In other words, it is difficult to accurately predict the final finishing of the printing by using a computer. Moreover, an image forming apparatus, such as a printer or copier, causes more color shifts or changes in density of a printed image, as the number of times of print processing is increased, due to degradation of a photosensitive member, a paper-feeding roller, a conveying roller, and the like.
The quality of the finished printed matter can be checked by performing trial printing. In trial printing, a batch of sheets is output in a unit of one copy as sample printing so as to check a finishing state with the print settings specified by the user. Conventionally, the trial printing is performed before performing actual printing. In other words, the trial print is visually checked to decide whether to really perform the actual printing. An attempt has been made such that a process of forming a copy image currently being executed is suspended and trial copy printing of the next document image is performed, so that trial copy printing can be performed even at extended reservation copying that allows the next document image to be read during a copying operation.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2005-234328 discloses a system that includes a surface image-pickup unit provided to a stock device for image pickup of a copy subject output from a copier and a displaying unit that displays the copy subject image-picked-up by the surface image-pickup unit, for the purpose of visually checking an image formation state of the copied subject and a stock state.
In addition, regarding checks on the finishing of the printed matter, a technology is also known in which, at the time of print output using an editing function, such as duplex printing or combination printing, a predicted finishing state can be checked on a display screen so as to save an unnecessary print output due to a setting error.
Conventionally, when changes of the quality of the finished printed matter with time are checked, the printing operation is temporarily suspended, and the printed matter is visually checked to see the finishing state. However, with the printing operation being suspended, productivity is disadvantageously decreased. Moreover, when the printed matter after print output is conveyed to a post-processing device, such as a stacker, a paper-delivery state in the stacker cannot be easily viewed, and therefore it is disadvantageously impossible to check the finishing state.
Furthermore, the trial printing function is to determine, as explained above, whether a desired finishing can be obtained with the print settings specified by the user, such as the number of combination, scaling factor, image density, and specification of duplex printing. Trial printing is targeted for a unit of batch of sheets and, to check changes with time, the printing operation being executed has to be suspended. Therefore, this suspension of the printing operation directly leads to a decrease in productivity in the conventional trial printing, in particular in bulk printing, thereby causing significant damages. Still further, there are also needs in which, for the purpose of checking only the quality, such as image density, of the printed image, a sample print output of the entire single copy is not necessarily required, and it is enough to check only the printed image on an arbitrary page or pages in the copy.
In the conventional technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2005-234328, to check the finishing, the image pickup unit, such as a charge coupled device (CCD) camera, and a displaying unit, such as a liquid-crystal display device, must be provided. This increases the costs. Moreover, although visual checks through a picked-up image are allowed, an actual printed image cannot be checked, thereby making it impossible to check the finishing quality with a sufficient accuracy.